In the Peace River Valley of northern B.C. — a rough landscape of rolling fields and quiet homesteads — a farmer talks about change in the big sky. There’s a tinge of red at the edges these days, he says, and it makes him think that “hell is just over the horizon.”

It comes from the burning of natural gas from the tall pipes that dot the Peace, a constant flame of red, orange and white. Sometimes there’s a smell of gas in the air as well, from where a pipeline is leaking or maybe rotted right through. Sometimes there’s the noise of an explosion because someone who doesn’t like the pipelines has been blowing them up.

“A certain kind of person might become a bit violent about it,” says Karl Mattson, a cowboy who rides the picturesque range in the Peace River. “Start bombing stuff.”

The bomber remains a mystery (despite a $1-million reward) but the conflict between the residents and the gas company is out in the open in Trouble in the Peace, an impressionistic documentary about what happens when old-time agriculture runs up against newfangled and lucrative energy exploration.

Director Julian T. Pinder (Land) doesn’t go too deeply into the science or even the evidence. Mattson — who is never formally introduced in the film — has suspicions about natural gas that extend to a two-headed calf that was born just as gas wells started being burned in the area. (Mattson preserved the body in a barrel.)

He and his neighbours are worried about the quality of the air and the water, and they meet in sparsely attended public meetings or at the local pub to complain that someone must be on the take or that the government is just “looking for quick cash.”

At one stage, we hear Mattson on the phone with a provincial official who tells him a recent leak was the result of a pipeline that wasn’t properly connected. Later, Mattson says the man was lying: the pipeline rotted in the middle, although we never see this. No government or gas company officials are interviewed.

Trouble in the Peace is more interested in compiling a montage of images, which are beautifully shot and arranged to express an emotional montage: A creeping camera, for instance, frames horses grazing in the setting sun after crawling over a sign that reads “Pipeline Crossing Slow To 30 km/h.”

There is no shortage of ugly gas plants, piles of discarded and twisted metal, construction equipment digging in muddy fields and so on. On the other hand, we meet farmers who use horse-drawn mows to cut the crops and gentle neighbours sitting in sunny, wooden kitchens worrying about this invasion of industry.

It’s played to a musical score that is heavy on the melancholy lament of violins, and it’s not the only expression of mourning. The economic argument for the pipelines is expressed by a neighbour who seems to have given up.

“I think you’re just wasting your time if you’re going to fight it,” he tells Mattson. “Agriculture’s a joke. It’s a burden on the taxpayers.”

There’s a sort of dark poetry at work here, both ugly (a long montage of gas flares burning in the sky) and precious (the decision to have Mattson’s daughter Hollis narrate a couple of scenes in a little-girl voice, including the official advice about what to do in case of an emergency: tape your windows).

It’s not an expose as much as a contemplation, and as it follows Mattson’s quixotic attempt to make a statement about what is going on — a sort of art project-cum-protest that is the film’s surprise — it takes on the characteristics of the unrest itself: sad, homemade and touching.

(An online video game, called Pipe Trouble, has been released in association with the film. Players must build a pipeline using the least pipe to make the most money and have the least impact on neighbours. It’s available as a free online trial through TVO — one of the producers — at http://www.pipetrouble.com, with a full version available for $1.99. A percentage of all proceeds will be donated to the David Suzuki Foundation.)

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